Meeting of the Committee on Foreign Affairs with Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the EP in Brussels. Statements by Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Richard Stuart HOWITT (S&amp;D, UK), Tunne KELAM (EPP, EE), Charles TANNOCK (ECR, UK), Fabio Massimo CASTALDO (EFDD, IT), and Ulrike LUNACEK (Greens/EFA, AT)

Committee on Foreign Affairs

Brussels

exchange of views

EU - Iran (T)

CASTALDO, Fabio Massimo (NI, IT)

LUNACEK, Ulrike (Greens/EFA, AT)

TANNOCK, Timothy Charles Ayrton (ECR, UK)

KELAM, Tunne (EPP, EE)

HOWITT, Richard (S&D, UK)

ZARIF, Javad (IR)

Exchange of views with Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran: extracts from the meeting of the Committee on Foreign Affairs

SOUNDBITE (in English) by Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran: The problem had been defined by the US in the beginning as that Iran should not have a nuclear programme, period. And that made it almost impossible for Iran to accommodate that objective.

SOUNDBITE (in English) by Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran: In 2013, when we resumed negotiations, we were able to redefine our objective. Redefine the objective as Iran having a nuclear programme that will always remain peaceful.

SOUNDBITE (in English) by Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Extremism is bound to spread; You cannot contain it in one country, you cannot contain it in one region. The ideology of hatred and extremism will spread. And we need to find ways of dealing with that and it cannot be a uni-dimensional approach. We cannot deal with this from a military perspective alone, although military may be necessary to deal with the hard chore of the problem. We need a cultural approach, we need and inter-religious dialogue approach, we need an economic approach to deal with unemployment.

SOUNDBITE (English), Richard Stuart HOWITT (S&amp;D, UK), Your 4-point plan on Yemen, I think it is important that we hear from you a little more on that plan because of our dire concerns about the humanitarian situation there, and secondly, on the Munich security conference on Friday you said that you  did foresee Saudi-Arabia and Iran being able to work together on security issues, place that a little bit more to us in this difficult context.

SOUNDBITE (English), Tunne KELAM (EPP, EE), Would you agree that the litmus-test for restoring trust will be improving the human rights situation in Iran, also improving situation of religious and national minorities? Take one case. A young woman,  Atena Farghadani, 29 years old, was sentenced to 12 years for posting a caricature of Facebook, protesting against new laws that curb women's rights.

SOUNDBITE (English), Charles TANNOCK (ECR, UK), Why does Iran need long-range ballistic missiles, and who are they and targeted at?

SOUNDBITE (Italian), Fabio Massimo CASTALDO (EFDD, IT), Still to today you are one of th major users of the death penalty, well there are thousands of cases over the last couple of years, can we expect that your reformist government will make a significant step towards the moratorium  of the death penalty during the coming years? We hope to see that.

SOUNDBITE (English), Ulrike LUNACEK (Greens/EFA, AT), As Vice-President for this parliament for the Sakharov Prize, I would like to refer to Jafar PANAHI and Nasrin SOTOUDEH, two Sakharov Prize Winners of 2012. When will Jafar PANAHI be able to make films again?

SOUNDBITE (in English) by Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran: On the death penalty: Iran captures, seizes, 85% of the opium that is seized in the world. We wer approached by the drug traffickers in the 1990s. They told us, let us transit drugs through Iran we will not leave any residues, we will take it to Europe where it is most economical for us, most rewarding financially.

SOUNDBITE (in English) by Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran: We are not saying that we have the best answer, but how do we want to deal with the problem of the biggest drug transit route in the world?

SOUNDBITE (in English) by Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran: we have said that there is no military solution to the Syrian crisis. Our Saudi neighbours are saying publicly that there is a military solution. Are they going to impose a military solution? Or are they willing to fight until the last NATO soldier in order to impose a military solution?

<p>SOUNDBITE (in English) by Mohammad Javad ZARIF Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Now the Iranian nuclear programme provide a smoke screen for NETANYAHU, to hide behind such a smoke screen, and not be accountable for the crimes that they were committing; settlements, reprisals, total annihilation of villages. Now the smoke screen is gone and that's why he was so opposed to the nuclear deal, because he did not want the smoke screen to disappear.</p>